Over the weekend came the Solstice, and I spent the majority of the day out and about, enjoying the charm of Boston in the summer. This will be my fourth and perhaps final summer living in Boston (though I’m not ruling out returning by any stretch), and I do plan on doing something in July with a camera and a monthly T pass to document the city as I’m leaving it. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, I’d like to echo the sentiments of fellow music blog Funeral Pudding by wishing you a happy summer through the voice of the greatest band of all time, The Modern Lovers. Frontman Jonathan Richman is a muse that has influenced an untold number of artists, my self most certainly included. He’s a quirky and wild force to reckon with, and constantly surprises and delights even almost 40 years after the Modern Lovers first formed (for example, did you know that he did a live accompaniment to the Sweedish silent film the Phantom Carriage last year?) Here’s Jonathan doing a classic off of his quiet 1992 album “I, Jonathan.” It’s the perfect summer song.
Ars Technica hit me with a quality one-two punch in reviews today, first with their take on the latest release of Songbird, and second with a Digg-smashing preview of Spore (specifically, the Creature Creator).
I’m meeting OhRyan for lunch, so I’ll be quick here:
Bank robbery, lockdowns, and arrests in my almost-hometown of Fitchburg last night. Worcester T&G has the story.
I don’t know how Moog keeps breaking into my dreams, but they should keep doing it. Moog has released an electric guitar that only Moog could put out. But maybe they could let some of us proles have a go at it too? $6500 is a lot for six strings, even if it does have infinite sustain. (Insert Nigel quote here).
Speaking of psychedelia (and I’m sure that with a lower price on the above guitar, a lot more people will be speaking of psychedelia), Boston’s own Apollo Sunshine have a new one coming out in late August or early September, depending on who you ask. Shall Noise Upon is the title. No word if they’ll go the way of Girl Talk with it. Largehearted Boy has a preview, and it sounds pretty damn good.
Longtime accomplice Oscar is off this week becoming a movie star extra for Martin Scorsese, and I wish him the best. He’s going to be a naked mental patient in Scorsese’s adaptation of Shutter Island. It’s the part he was born to play.
I’m going to end this on a serious note: Dennis Kucinich spent 290 minutes on the floor of congress reading 35 articles for Impeachment for the President of the United States. While many feel that this is far too late to consider such action, I strongly disagree. My reasoning is matched to George Washington Law Professor Jonathan Turley, who was on The Countdown the other night:
What’s really disturbing for many of us is that it takes a real effort for Democrats to walk from the Floor to their offices and not trip over crimes. They are all over the record, from destruction of evidence, to illegal surveillance, to unlawful torture programs… they’re all over the place. [...] All that’s really lacking is political will. [...] [The Democrats] are afraid there might be a backlash if they try to Impeach. But of course that’s literally all politics and no principle. They took an oath in the House of Representatives, and the most important thing they have to do as House members is to stand firm in the face of Presidential crimes. And I think history will be very, very severe, not just for Speaker Pelosi but all of the Democrats, of how they could let this come to pass, where they stood silent and did nothing in the face of such compelling criminal record.
For the past couple days I’ve been enjoying the long weekend by working on some experimental composition. For a while I had a variety of pedals, pads, knobs, and computer programs all laid out in a circle and started creating some rather strange loops and effects.
Being in my living room for good stretches also helps me observe the happenings on Beacon street, which runs right by my window. One thing I’ve noticed recently is that the Brookline Police have rekindled the old speed trap right outside, and have been consistently nailing people who recklessly zip by (and a note to Beacon St. drivers: slow down! It’s that speed limit for a reason. People live up here).
The police have been very clever about the trap; sometimes it’s set up at night with a car parked amidst all of the residents, sometimes it’s two cops working in tandem from both sides of the lanes, sometimes it’s just one bold cop walking out in front of a speeding car and pointing to the side. They seem to have all the latest radar gadgetry as well, making for very efficient ticketing, I’m sure.
They’re doing us neighbors a pretty nice service by keeping the traffic outside our window moving a reasonable pace, so I’d like to help them any way I can. One thing I’ve noticed is that, while the police do seem to have a great system and quality equipment at their disposal, I have yet to hear the gritty Brookline police traffic stop theme music for when they’re nailing bad guys. And so, I humbly submit this rather goofy track that I’ve tossed together over the past few days:
My company Hobnox seeks to be a destination site for the creative community - a place where artists and designers can come online and share their content, while we provide materials on the site to equip these users with the tools to create and a variety of outlets for expression.
Of these tools, the most popular to date certainly has been the Audiotool (although the Livetool is also effing brilliant, and <teaser>will be used in a part of Endless Feature soon</teaser>…). The audiotool is a brainchild of André Michelle, web designer and wunderkind, and as the German office would say. In its early stages BoingBoing ran a piece on the first component of the tool, a flash-based re-imagination of the Roland TR-909 Rhythm Composer. Since the the tool has grown considerably, adding in a TR-808, two TB-303s and a variety of effects pedals with EQs, Compression, Delays, Reverb, and Distortion.
We’ve seen plenty of sites that let you make or mix music in a rudimentary way, but none that offer the deep feature set of Hobnox AudioTool. This free online electronic music studio lets you compose with two TB-303 Bass Line generators, Roland TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines and two banks of effects pedals including three delays, crusher, detune, flanger, reverb, a parametric equalizer and a compressor. By clicking the mouse button, you can drag virtual cables between any output and any input to customize the setup.
Composing music in this way is a bit tedious, because you need to add and shape each note individually. But this is exactly how many electronic musicians work, because it allows so much control over each element of the loops and allows you to create melodies and beats without playing them.
Here’s a video that my senior seminar course took a while dissecting and analyzing. Celemony software, makers of Melodyne, well established pitch correction software, have released a new version of their software late last year, featuring Direct Note Access, a new technology which allows engineers to tweak audio based on individual notes within chords (a real-audio implementation of something engineers have been using for years with MIDI). You really have to see it to believe it:
We debated this at length in class. Is this right? Is this good? Should you have to place a disclaimer when you use it? Are you setting unrealistic expectations of the quality of recordings? Can you really stop this from happening? These are the sorts of questions music industry professionals have to ask themselves. I’ve always considered myself quite a purist, and have yet to use any pitch correction in my recordings, despite having ample access to the technology. But I also have deep feelings for the furtherance of technology and science, and have yet to run up against a “playing God” scenario in my memological homeworld of music. Mix Magazine contributor Blair Jackson has a great article on pitch correction, comparing it to the steroids scandal in baseball.
I for one put faith in the music consuming public, much as those in the art world can only hope that those who go to museums can appreciate why the Guggenheim chose one painting over another. A lot of what we are fed in the music world is very much forced upon us by large media (as I ranted about last week), and as Jackson so eloquently puts it:
…not surprisingly, there have been whisperings and suspicions about this or that singer, mostly in the pop music arena, where slickness rules the day and perfection often trumps genuine passion. Take Britney Spears…[n]ow, I have no idea whether her producers used some pitch correction on her. And the reason I don’t know is because I’m not sure I’ve ever actually heard her sing. If you’ve ever watched any of her cable TV specials, they are so phony-baloney lip-synched it’s laughable…but even more, it’s pathetic. I can’t believe a cable network would pay big money for what is so obviously a pre-taped entertainment.
Someday, one can hope, people will realize that much of their consumption is being fed to them in a way that is forceful and in no way self-sustaining (there’s a reason there hasn’t been a true rock icon act since the 80s). Someday people will wake up to the social and political issues around them surrounding mainstream media and turn to music for enlightenment and empowerment, as well as entertainment. On that day, this will not matter. Until then, and I see this as no contradiction, I support the work of Celemony, and overall I am ok with pitch correction software existing, as long as people are aware that it’s in use. I don’t want to say disclosure will be mandatory, but people should know by now that Avril Lavigne isn’t actually signing.
Live music is an equalizer here, but the larger the production, the easier it is to slip these tools in a live setting. As it stands, you can’t do this on the fly, and you can hear a quanitzed vocal in a song. Hometracked has a brilliant listening exercise that’ll help you pick it out. But as Melodyne is showing us, it’s getting easier and easier to slip this in unknown to us. Eventually, like commercial photography, we’ll only have to assume that things are getting polished without our knowledge, and the true talent will shine through that either in their un-touchedness or general artistic vision.
Until then? My solution, as with most problems, is to listen to more Tom Waits.
Here’s a preview of my company, Hobnox, from our recent evolution festival, hosted in Berlin. The company is presenting itself as a multi-purpose web solution for artists, helping people upload and share media, collaborate with others, and play with our own creative line of online tools (Noxtools, as we affectionately call them).
These guys don’t just pay my rent; I think we’re onto something really cool with this site. Check it out, and feel free to ask for an invitation to our closed Beta. More details when the site goes live!
I’m currently creating this. New studio for the Demons, me, Hobo Zero, and other projects. Plus looking into the chance of finding a Koto for cheap on EBay. If you’ve seen Hero you know what a Koto is. Probably won’t happen though.
